Customer Reviews

Younger Than That Now: A Shared Passage from the Sixties

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4 star:		(4)
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This is probably the one we've been looking forward to for a long time - a moving, no-holds-barred, enriching, open-hearted account of coming of age in America in the late 60s and early 70s. Jeff D and Ruth C W bring the times to life in a hundred ways, smells and sights and the half-forgotten names of politicos and rock bands and faded belief systems and hopes that were crushed or altered by the weight of time. In its own way it is an epic journey, personal and private, and public too, dealing with the small things in life as well as the big issues. Sad and funny, with whacky characters and eccentrics and originals and sweethearts, it's not a book to miss, if you remember the Steve Miller Band and Credence - and even if you don't, read it anyway for its humanity.

Younger Than That Now was, for me, a personal journey with kindred spirits back to the fire of my youth. Ruth and Jeff have generously opened up their most impressive friendship to the reader describing with both poignant earnestness and incisive humor their personal success at transcending differences. If they had merely focused on the amazing accomplishment of a heterosexual male and female managing a platonic friendship over time and space, it would have been newsworthy. But they wove in familiar names of our generation who have combined the social ideals of the 60's while honing entreprennurial savey reflective of our times (is there anyone who has NOT succumbed to the lure of Ben & Jerry's ice cream?) coupled with a delicious recounting of the regional idiosyncratic differences between northerners (ok, Yankees) and southerners, and threaded with the yarn of historical perspective. The writing reflected rich, descriptive prose that hung sensuously like the moss on a live oak coupled with clean, crisp journalistic insights. This book was a sheer delight to read. As a (yes, I admit it) born and raised Yankee--and middle-aged baby boomer--who has lived my entire adult life in the South, I felt like I had truly come home in the pages of this book both in the people that I met there and the places they inhabited.

This is an excellent memoir of friendship, honest and touching and moving and funny; of the passage of time and how it affects relationships. It's a book about the attraction of opposites and cultures, Ruth, a candidate for a Southern belle, Jeff a hippie radical from Long Island, and how they meet in less than propitious circumstances in the sixties - suspicion on both sides that changes and mellows into a lasting friendship. This is a chronicle of two people working out their lives and dreams and hopes in the changing times of America, from the sixties to now - from the pot-smoking days of the counterculture to the betrayals of Nixon and then through the bland years of consensus that have befallen American political life. Two intelligent voices and a damn good book.

This book coauthored by two people who shared a high school graduation year brought me back to my own life in those turbulent times. I remember the 1970 campus demonstration at my own campus as a lark by some radicals on a warm fall evening. The more conservative Ruth and the more liberal Jeff change places during the 70's and find they are both on a wandering course. As with many of their generation the responsibilities they gather add a certain sense of direction and purpose in their lives. For those of us who were there perhaps you will see a glimpse of yourself or someone you know. For our children this may help you to understand the events that molded your parents. This book chronicles the changes of the times and sets before the reader two very special lives and one very special relationship.

Younger Than That Now is a wonderful book, and much more than a saga of the 'sixties. It's a beautifully written, honest and moving story of two seemingly different people who achieve unity by struggling to understand each other and how they grow and change as a result. Ruth and Jeff pull no punches in their stories, and they come across with all the foibles that make up human nature, and in doing so, inspire the reader to see that there are no mistakes in life, just lessons. And even more than that, the book is a parable of the evolution of culture, and ultimately civilization as we see that how we affect each other as we negotiate the minefields of youth, relationships and politics can help us build a life we feel proud of.

I was delighted to get a gift of this book from a friend. I was in Vietnam as a medic and missed some of the time the book covers, so I had a sense of discovering something fresh. I enjoyed this story of two people making it through the times back then, and being friends for so long. I guess what is best about this book is the direct way it is written. It's nothing fancy, just straight, by two honest people. They each take turns telling their story - of growing up and going to college and getting involved in the screwed-up politics of the seventies and generally just getting through. It's a good read.

Ostensibly a book about friendship, this narrative is much more than that. It's a text for the times in which many of us came of age, the 60s and 70s - so it will bring back a flood of nostalgia for a lot of people. Times of hanging out, listening to The Dead, worrying about nothing, smoking a little dope, staying cool - and then suddenly the real world comes crashing in. Politics and war, change and chaos. Read this book for a satisfying echo of the times.

The co-authors convey, with heartbiting accuracy, the sorrows and joys, the loves and absences, the triumphs and losses, of a long-term friendship that began in less than auspicious circumstances. From the 1960s until the present time, they track the course of a friendship that was destined to overcome cultural and political and geographical differences,and in the course of their journey they remind us of the nature of true friendship, how it ebbs and wanders, how it survives partings and disagreements: a very human book that is touching and genuine and without affectation.

Some books burn themselves into your brain like acid through metal, and this is one of them, a sweet-sour, moving, good-hearted, soulful account of a long friendship, complete with warts and blisters, and partings and loss and reunion. It takes us through the comet-like end of the sixties and through the profane years of the Vietnam experience and up to time present, a story so stuffed with accurate observation there are times you'll think - Yeah, this is what I remember from those days, this is what it was like, I remember when people felt strongly about politics and had a vision of America, and how easily this vision was discarded in the cynicism that culminated in the callous administration of GW Bush. This book shows you the curve, the way we fell from those hippy-happy days, days of promise and light, and love. But this is an upbeat book, this isn't some diatribe against the dark: this is a song about love and friendship and what these things really mean - politicians come and go, thank the stars, but friendship and love endure...Read this lovely work and remember that the heart is what matters.

Younger Than That Now is a wonderful book, and much more than a saga of the `sixties. It's a beautifully written, honest and moving story of two seemingly different people who achieve unity by struggling to understand each other and how they grow and change as a result. Ruth and Jeff pull no punches in their stories, and they come across with all the foibles that make up human nature, and in doing so, inspire the reader to see that there are no mistakes in life, just lessons. And even more than that, the book is a parable of the evolution of culture, and ultimately civilization as we see that how we affect each other as we negotiate the minefields of youth, relationships and politics can help us build a life we feel proud of.